Reddit Removes Accounts Tied to Russian Propaganda

Reddit's CEO, however, indicated that there's many grey areas related to online propaganda that simply can't all be banned.

Facebook and Twitter haven't been the only platforms fighting Russian propaganda. Reddit has been cracking down too.

On Monday, Reddit's CEO said that the company had shut down a "few hundred accounts" linked with Russian propaganda efforts. However, the company warned that the battle against state-sponsored misinformation was no black and white affair.

"I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it's not that easy," said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman in his post. "Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey."

He pointed to the complex challenge of "indirect propaganda," or when real Reddit users share or upvote content that's been sourced to Russian propaganda originally posted outside the platform.

"For example, the Twitter account @TEN_GOP is now known to be a Russian agent," Huffman said. "@TEN_GOP's Tweets were amplified by thousands of Reddit users, and sadly, from everything we can tell, these users are mostly American, and appear to be unwittingly promoting Russian propaganda."

A few of those posts from @TEN_GOP gained over 6,000 upvotes on Reddit, and made the front page of President Donald Trump's subreddit page.

Huffman's statement on Monday didn't mention what the company might do to address this problem. He simply wrote: "It's up to all of us —Redditors, citizens, journalists— to work through these issues."

(In contrast, Twitter has been notifying users who interacted with the Russian propaganda. Facebook has created a tool that can do the same.)

Reddit's CEO made the statement after The Daily Beast reported that a Russian "troll farm" called the Internet Research Agency had exploited the platform to spread propaganda during the 2016 presidential election. According to US federal investigators, the agency did the same through Twitter and Facebook by creating fake accounts to influence US voters.

Huffman said Reddit is cooperating with Congress into investigating the alleged Russian interference. However, the company is refraining from publicly revealing all the details. "We also want to be careful to not tip our hand too much while we are investigating," Huffman said.

In the meantime, the company has banned all ads that come from Russia. During the 2016 election, the platform saw very few ads that came from the country, and most had to do with spam or initial coin offerings, Huffman said. Reddit also continues to search for and shut down Reddit accounts tied to Russian propaganda campaigns.

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"I actually believe what we're going through right now will actually reinvigorate Americans to be more vigilant, hold ourselves to higher standards of discourse, and fight back against propaganda, whether foreign or not," Huffman added.

Reddit has been trying to balance free speech while reining in controversial content. In October, for instance, it closed down several Nazi related subreddits when Reddit implemented new forum rules that banned content glorifying or inciting violence.

Nevertheless, other kinds of controversial content continue to remain. One of the most infamous subreddits is /r/WatchPeopleDie, which as its name suggests, shows videos of people dying. Reddit also became a hotbed for AI-generated porn. It wasn't until last month when the platform cracked down on the activities.